This Blog describes the ongoing development of a 16mm scale 45mm gauge garden railway situated in the North West of England, UK from 2004 to the present day.
Inevitably, I find that while I have a bolt or screw of the right diameter for a job, it is seldom the right length and so I often end-up having to shorten them. This is a method which my dad taught me when I woz but a lad!
The most important step is the first one. Screw a nut on to the bolt before attempting to shorten it and then screw it down to below the point at which you want to shorten the bolt.
Place the remaining thread of the bolt in a vice and tighten.
With a hacksaw or junior hacksaw, cut off the excess.
Then place the shortened bolt in the vice, head down ...........
..... and file off any swarf and flatten off the end. Also smooth off the sides of the bolt a little.
The bolt can now be removed from the vice and the nut unscrewed. This will clean out the thread of any debris or excess metal shavings. Sometimes the nut needs working back and forth the remove stubborn shavings or to cut a new thread, but once removed you should be able to easily rethread it.
In this way, you can tailor your bolts and screws to your exact requirements.
Adding weight to large scale locomotives is important as it greatly improves their adhesion to the track and hence their pulling power. As I have 1:40 gradients on my railway, my locos need as much power as they can muster and so I have added as much weight as possible to all my locos, whether off-the shelf, kit-built or scratchbuilt.
My (now not very) secret ingredient is lead flashing which is used for weatherproofing roofs on houses. I buy mine in a roll from my local builders' merchants, but I have also used the recycled flashing from when a boiler flue was removed from our house.
Lead flashing is bought in a roll and comes in various widths, lengths and thicknesses (gauges). I buy the shortest, thinnest and narrowest which they have but even that costs around £25. However, it is sufficient for at least five locomotives and so works out to be reasonably cost effective.
After deciding where the lead will be placed, the flashing is marked-out ..........
........ and strips are then cut from the roll using tin-snips.
These are then inserted in various cavities on the model, such as the side tanks .......
...... or inside the boiler (in this case the upper part of the boiler).
To prevent the strips from rattling around, I flood the cavity holding them with clear Bostik or Uhu glue. This acts as a filler and also as a bonding agent - but does retain some plasticity to acts as a shock absorber.
It's important to try and keep the weight as much as possible over the driving wheels. If weight is added to the front of the loco, a similar weight needs to be added to the rear to keep everything in balance.
To check the evenness of the weighting, you can place one set of driving wheels on a set of kitchen scales while the others are resting on a suitable surface (eg a pile of books) to see if equal weights are being carried by each set of drivers.
So far, I have used this technique for making the boiler of a locomotive and the spectacle rings for a loco cab but it could be used for anything where a curved surface was required (eg a saddle tank, cab roof, diesel bonnet etc.).
For the loco boiler, I used a former (a plastic waste pipe) which was just too small in diameter. Around this I wrapped a layer of 1.5mm (60 thou) thick plasticard which was the right length and approximately the correct width for the calculated circumference of the boiler (pi (3.142) x the diameter (44mm) = 138.248mm). However, as it is easier to trim back than extend, I increased this to 145mm to be on the safe side.
The plasticard was then wrapped around the plastic pipe and held in place with cable ties. Wooden coffee stirrers were inserted along the edge of the plasticard to keep it flat. The first time I tried this I omitted the coffee stirrers and ended up with an undulating, wavy edge).
This was then placed in a washing-up bowl and boiling water from a kettle was poured over it until the assembly was submerged. It was left in the water for ten minutes and then removed. When the cable ties were slipped off, the plasticard retained its tubular shape.
The process was repeated to give me two tubes, which were then glued together using liquid poly MEK glue (with the joints on opposing sided of the tube for greater strength). Elastic bands being used to keep the laminations tightly bound together while the solvent did its work.
A similar approach was used to make the spectacle surrounds for the cab. In this case, 3mm wide strips of 2mm thick plasticard were cut out, their length being considerably more than the circumference of the spectacles.
After considerable fiddling, I found the easiest way to coil them was to loosely insert them into a looped cable tie (the same ones I used for the boiler) ..........
... and then slip them over the former (in this case a felt tip marker pen was about the right diameter).
This was then placed in a small bowl and covered with boiling water from a kettle. The spoons were used to keep the whole thing submerged.
After ten minutes, the felt tip was removed from the water and the cable ties slipped off. The rings now retained their shape.
Each one was then inserted into the spectacle opening and carefully marked, before being trimmed to the right size. It was then glued into place using liquid poly solvent (MEK) applied with a small paintbrush.
Before priming and painting, any gaps will be filled with filler and smoothed off with fine emery paper. here is the completed loco prior to being painted.
The secret to getting consistent rivets is the riveting tool. This was constructed from a 30cm length of 2mm OD (outside diameter) brass tube, a short piece of 3mm OD brass tube, a steel nail and a piece of lead flashing.
The larger diameter tubing was threaded over the smaller diameter tube to act as a slider. A washer was soldered to the bottom of the slider and a piece of lead flashing was then wrapped around the slider tube to act as a weight.
The end of the nail was sawn off, inserted into the long tube and soldered into place.
After constructing the structure of the model in 2mm (80thou) plasticard ........
....... overlays for the surfaces requiring the addition of rivets were cut-out from 0.5mm (20thou) plasticard. Where feasible, I usually make the overlays slightly larger than needed so that after they have been glued on they can be trimmed exactly to size.
A strip of graph paper with a 2mm grid was then fixed on to the overlay using masking tape,
...... in this case the paper was wrapped around the overlay and taped to the back.
After calculating the spacing for the rivets (by dividing the number of rivets into the length), the strip was marked with the positions of the rivets ......
The position of the rivets is then transferred to the overlay by pricking through the graph paper with the point of a pair of compasses.
The point of the riveting tool was then positioned in each of the pinpricks (the point naturally locates itself in the hole). The weight was raised to the the same position up the brass rod and released to give a consistent impression. The higher the weight is raised the deeper the depression and the larger the rivet.
The overlay was then glued on to the relevant panel with solvent .......
....... and once the glue had set, the excess was trimmed off with a craft knife and tidied up with a file.
This year has so far been quite eventful on the Peckforton Light Railway. I have spent a fair bit of time and money exploring the feasibility of battery power for the railway. My aim has been to construct a complete roster of battery powered locos to be able to run an operating session.
So far I have constructed four battery powered vehicles:
She works well now, although the gears do make a fair bit of racket. However, as it actually sounds a bit like an early Model T Ford engine I'm quite happy! (See How I constructed a railmotor)
An 0-4-0 diesel loco (now christened Wynford). This was constructed from an IP Engineering kit (Jessie) but I've replaced the original gearbox with one using 00 locomotive metal gears. (See How I constructed an IP Engineering diesel) Hopefully it will last a bit longer than the original plastic geared version.
This has a 3-6v motor, 4 x AA NiMh batteries and a Deltang receiver/controller. I've not yet added a sound card to this model but am considering something very small and cheap.
A 2-4-2T steam loco based on the second Southwold Railway loco No.1 Southwold (see How I constructed a 2-4-2T loco inspired by a Southwold Railway Sharp Stewart) is presently under construction. Power is provided by an 0-4-0 Playmobil motor-block and, as with the Manning Wardle (see above), the body is constructed from plasticard.
As you can see, she is more or less complete and about to enter the paint-shop. She is powered by a 12v li-ion battey and controlled with a Deltang rx60 receiver/controller. She will also have a MyLocoSound soundcard fitted in the bunker.
Adding sound
Until now I have resisted adding sound to my locos, but as I've become more interested in battery power, it felt like a natural progression. I started first with the diesel loco and invested in a Digisounds card from Peter Spoerer (see How I added a diesel sound card to Wynford).
Having found this experience rewarding, I decided to try adding a steam MyLocoSounds card to the 0-6-2T loco.
What I like about this sound card is that the volume of the sound varies dependent on whether the loco is accelerating or decelerating. The only issue is trying to sychronise the beat of the cylinders to the speed of the loco.
Rationalising resources
To fund these developments, I decided it was time to rationalise some of the gear I had accumulated over time. As I am intending to move over to battery operation, I felt the track cleaning loco was an unnecessary extravagance. As these have risen in price since I bought to over £600 to buy new, I hoped I would recoup the money which I paid for it when I bought it secondhand.
It realised over £350 which was slightly more than I paid for it and so this added substantially to the battery loco kitty.
I also decided to pass on the Jigstones moulds which had been bought for me several Christmases ago. I had used some of them to mould some blocks but decided that there was actually very little space on my railway for more buildings and so, before they deteriorated with age, I decided they needed to be passed on to someone who would make better use of them.
